Saturday, April 30, 2011

Michelle Malkin has an update on her cousin, Marizela Perez, who has been missing for two months. Today is her 19th birthday.

Unfortunately, there is no news or leads.

Michelle discloses that the family has not received cooperation from Jack in the Box Corporation for suveillance video at one of its locations, nor from Google in preserving search and other data. Give them a polite contact at the links.

This is the latest in a series on the use of the race card for political gain:

And on the 75th episode of the Saturday Night Card Game, we again ponder how we have reached the point where words or expressions which have no connection to race have become a tool by which the race card players stalk Republicans, conservatives and Tea Party supporters.

For those of you who are new to these parts, here are some prior words or terms which have caused problems:

The latest example is the nontroversy over Mitt Romney's play of the common phrase to "hang an albatross around his neck." That metaphor was used frequently during the 2008 campaign as commenters throughout the left-blogosphere wanted Democrats to hang George W. Bush around John McCain's neck.

Romney used this metaphor yesterday in New Hampshire when referring to our economic misery index, which he substituted for the word albatross, and then applied it to Barack Obama:

You can guess the rest, media buzz and cries of racism because in the games of the race card players, hanging the misery index around Obama's neck or hanging Obama with it, just like it was hung around Carter's neck, is exactly the same thing as saying "let's lynch the black guy."

Really. Here is some media/blogosphere reaction to what is being portrayed as a major "gaffe":

HuffPo: "Mitt Romney's camp is attempting to do damage control after the presidential aspirant made controversial remarks in criticizing President Barack Obama during a stop in New Hampshire on Friday night.

Raw Story: "In a speech at the pro-GOP Americans for Prosperity dinner, former Massachusetts governor and contender for the GOP presidential nomination Mitt Romney said he would "hang" Obama, then immediately realized his gaffe and tried to smooth over his mistake."

Politico: "Any reference to hanging — however unintentional — would be especially loaded in a campaign against the country's first black president, as Romney apparently recognized."

Daily News: "Mitt Romney scrambled to do some damage control after he suggested it was time to "hang" President Obama in a speech in New Hampshire Friday night.

What lunacy. It's become a mind control game. These people are not addressing actual racism, they're just playing word games and gotcha.

The Obama campaign doesn't need to do a thing, it just needs to sit back and let the media do its job for it. Fairy tales do come true when you are up against the media's love affair with Obama. (By using the term "affair" I do not intend any subtext or tinge.)

Romney should not be apologizing. He said nothing wrong. He was not suggesting a literal hanging of Obama and he did not use racial terminology. But recognizing the way in which race-neutral words would be twisted against him, Romney clarified the remarks on the spot. There is no story here.

Oh, by the way, the phrase I used in the title to this post is taken from the quote attributed to Lenin (although it's not clear if he actually said it) that:

I'm really proud to see Chris Christie cracking down on the public teachers union in NJ, but I think he could take a page from Mitch Daniels' book after seeing the latest piece of legislation the Indiana governor has helped bring to fruition....

The final components of Gov. Mitch Daniels’ education reform package – a massive new voucher program and charter school expansion – cleared the Indiana House on Wednesday and could be law within days with just the stroke of a pen.

Two other bills affecting Indiana education have already passed – one reducing collective bargaining rights for teachers and another tying teacher pay to student performance.

A state will a voucher structure in place will be a great boon for those in the fight for school choice. The evidence against the status quo is overwhelming, but the example of a statewide solution would really bring things home.

I applaud Governor Daniels and hope to see Chris Christie emulate him.

Think Progress, the Democratic messaging website run by John Podesta of the Center for American Progress, has been a frequent focus here for its outlandish race-card playing and other antics.

This week Think Progress hit a new low, when it ran a blog post mocking the politics of southern states which were hit by tornadoes, using the devastation as an excuse both to push a global warming agenda and to take a swipe at the conservative politics of the region.

To make sure no one missed it, the post was run again in the evening under the "Healthy Communities" section of Think Progress:

Putting aside the offensive and crass political swipe, the attempt to draw a connection between the tornadoes and climate change simply was false:

US meteorologists warned Thursday it would be a mistake to blame climate change for a seeming increase in tornadoes in the wake of deadly storms that have ripped through the US south.

"If you look at the past 60 years of data, the number of tornadoes is increasing significantly, but it's agreed upon by the tornado community that it's not a real increase," said Grady Dixon, assistant professor of meteorology and climatology at Mississippi State University.
"It's having to do with better (weather tracking) technology, more population, the fact that the population is better educated and more aware. So we're seeing them more often," Dixon said.

But he said it would be "a terrible mistake" to relate the up-tick to climate change.

Here is a chart of tornado history in the U.S. (via Watts Up With That), showing that even with better detection and tracking, the number of strong tornadoes is not really increasing:

Lacking a scientific basis for the crude political swipe, Think Progress did what Wonkette originally did, double-down.

The outrage at the Think Progress post will not last, unlike the outrage directed at Wonkette. In part, it's because there is no one to whom to complain. Think Progress, flush with cash from big Democratic donors, has no advertisers.

But in part it's because we expect so much less from Think Progress than from Wonkette.

(As an aside, notice how the author uses the term "climate pollution." Is that the new verbiage?)

The controversy was not the protest, but that the White House communications team threatened to suspended the reporter who took the videotape, because multimedia coverage of Obama's fundraiser was not permitted. The White House now denies the threat, but the San Francisco Chronicle calls the White House statement a "pants on fire" lie.

Friday, April 29, 2011

King & Spalding dumped the House of Representatives as a client in DOMA litigation after coming under threatened protests and boycotts by groups opposed to DOMA.

A key aspect of the threats was that protesters not only would protest King & Spalding, but would go after other King & Spalding clients which had nothing to do with the DOMA case. That, apparently, was too much for King & Spalding to bear, so it threw the House of Representatives overboard.

King & Spalding may have started something it cannot stop.

Ken Cuccinelli, the Attorney General of Virginia now has dumped King & Spalding as special counsel (it's not clear in what), as reported by The Washington Examiner (via Powerline). Here is the text of Cuccinelli's letter, which reads in pertinent part (emphasis mine):

We seek to do business exclusively with law firms that do more than merely aim to perform the bottom of the barrel ethical obligations and do just enough on behalf of their clients to avoid trouble for themselves. We seek law firms that will actively protect our interests, even when that may be uncomfortable for their firms.

Virginia does not shy away from hiring outside counsel because they may have ongoing professional relationships with people or entities, or on behalf of causes, that I, or my office, or
Virginia as a whole, may not support. But, it is crucial for us to be able to trust and rely on the fact that our outside counsel will not desert Virginia due to pressure by an outside group or groups.

Virginia seeks firms of commitment, courage, strength and toughness, and unfortunately, what the world has learned of King & Spalding, is that your firm utterly lacks those qualities. As the official in Virginia responsible for ensuring that the legal needs of Virginia's agencies are well met, I cannot leave UV AMC in the hands of a law firm of such weakness.

By way of example and explanation, King & Spalding's role in representing terrorists is not objectionable to Virginia, because we understand the value of legal counsel, even for persons who hate this country and desire to do America and Americans harm. However, King & Spalding's willingness to abandon a client, the United States House of Representatives, in connection with the lawsuit challenging the Defense of Marriage Act ("DOMA"), was such an obsequious act of weakness, that I feel compelled to end your legal association with Virginia so that there is no chance that one of my legal clients might be put in the embarrassing and difficult situation like the client you walked away from, the House of Representatives.

The failure of King & Spalding to maintain the kinds of minimum standards that Virginia would expect as a client of your firm is perhaps best demonstrated by the stunning dichotomy in the maintenance (or lack thereof) of its clients in my examples: it is acceptable to maintain client relationships with clients associated with terrorism, but not clients associated with marriage. And when it comes to dropping a client, it is a dichotomy that should not exist at any quality law firm.

Virginia simply cannot abide placing any reliance whatsoever on a law firm that makes decisions and acts in the manner of King & Spalding, and so we must terminate our relationship at this time. For future reference, your firm is not welcome to re-apply for special counsel status at any time as long as I am the Attorney General of Virginia.

King & Spalding, like many seemingly powerful large law firms, actually is extremely vulnerable once it becomes known that it will give in to political pressure. What if pro-DOMA groups sought to bring political pressure to bear?

According to its website, King & Spalding represents a majority of states (including state agencies plus many local municipalities) in municipal bond work (emphasis mine):

King & Spalding has been nationally recognized in the field of public finance for close to 70 years. As the first firm in the southeastern United States to be listed in The Bond Buyer’s Municipal Marketplace as approved bond counsel, we have maintained a prominent position in the southeast and expanded our Public Finance Group to act as bond counsel throughout most of the U.S....

King & Spalding has represented issuers as bond counsel in thousands of public finance transactions throughout the country. As the oldest bond counsel firm in the State of Georgia, King & Spalding has been involved in borrowings by virtually every city and county in the state and consistently ranks first among the State’s top bond counsel. Nationally, we rank 25th among the top 100 bond counsel. Having acted as bond counsel in over 40 states, we have worked on a wide variety of financings for governmental projects as well as conduit issues for manufacturing facilities, airports, docks, ports, multi-family housing projects, sports facilities, hospitals, convention facilities and utility facilities.

Our practice also includes serving as underwriters’ counsel on tax-exempt borrowings. Our innovative strategies have attracted both regional and national underwriting firms and have made King & Spalding the top ranked underwriters’ firm in Georgia and one of the highest ranked firms in the southeast....

It just so happens that almost every state in the country has either DOMA constitutional amendments or DOMA legislation, including Georgia. Here is a map:

Based on this map, it appears that on the issue of DOMA King & Spalding is acting against the interests of virtually all of its state municipal bond clients (and likely a high percentage of local municipal bond clients).

I am not advocating that DOMA states do unto King & Spalding that which Virginia did unto King & Spalding, or that which King & Spalding did unto the House of Representatives.

But just as King & Spalding and its clients succumbed to pressure from anti-DOMA groups, so too these states and municipalities may succumb to pressure from pro-DOMA groups.

King & Spalding needs to go back to school, because it is on the verge of being schooled.

There's a beauty and level of comfort in the ethical rules and principles which govern attorneys; the rules provide a compass which insulates attorneys from pressures to do the wrong thing, whether those pressures are brought by clients or outsiders. I teach my students that the rules of ethics are not an enemy, they are an attorney's best friend.

When attorneys put business convenience ahead of the attorney's duty of loyalty to a client, there is no good outcome.

"Push-polling" is where a type of campaign tactic where, under the guise of a poll, misleading or inflammatory questions are asked about an opposing candidate. The point of the push-poll is to persuade the person being polled as to a candidate or issue, rather than actually soliciting opinions.

A similar tactic is being used by the Wisconsin Democratic Party to try to get people who signed petitions to recall Democratic state Senator Robert Wirch to say that they were deceived or didn't know what they were signing. The tactic is not a push-poll, but a call seeking to verify petition signatures in which suggestive statements are made which would call into question the signature.

As reflected in the audio below, the push-call starts with the following introduction suggesting that there has been a widespread problem with petition signatures:

"The reason we're calling is there were reports from people in the community that out of state paid circulators were misleading people about what they were being asked to sign and we have reports of them tricking voters into thinking they were signing a petition, say at a nearby shopping mall, or providing them with misleading information, so all we were calling was to find out is if you did intend to sign the petition to remove Democratic Senator Wirch from office."

Before the audio started, the caller did identify herself as calling from the Democratic Party. According to the person who provided me with the audio, the number which showed up on the caller i.d. was the number used by the group fighting the recall on behalf of Wirch.

Here is the audio (note: the voices are slightly distorted because the woman receiving the call is afraid that her identity would be revealed, and the audio cuts off the last few seconds of the call where the first names of both people are used):

The point of the introduction is to suggest that the petition signer may have been deceived, and that the phone call merely is a form of verification. This is not an attempt to solicit facts, but to suggest facts to the person who signed the petition.

At no part of the call does the caller indicate she not only is calling for the Democratic Party, she is working for the Wirch campaign as part of efforts to throw out the recall petition.

The Recall Wirch group which organized the petition drive has issued a press release objecting to these tactics, which apparently have taken place in other districts as well.

There certainly is nothing wrong with verifying signatures. That's what the process is about.

But it must be very unsettling to people, in light of the death threats and intimidation tactics employed by opponents of Gov. Scott Walker, to receive a phone call at home when phone numbers were not part of the petition.

In normal times perhaps a phone call at home would not be viewed as intimidation, but considering what has happened in Wisconsin, people who receive such calls must be worried.

Additionally, the phone call is deceptive, in that it suggests at the start that there has been a problem reported "by people in the community" with deceptive petition practices. In fact, other than a few isolated incidents, there has not been any evidence made public of widespread problems with the over 18,000 signatures (only 13,537). And the call was not made as a response to complaints, but as part of a pre-planned attack on the petitions.

This is an attempt to create the appearance of problems with the Recall Wirch petitions, not to document actual pre-existing problems.

Bloomberg View will be a comprehensive opinion resource and, I have to say, I'm really impressed by their lineup. Postrel and a few others will be on my GoogleReader, but I'm even looking forward to some of the people I doubt I will agree with (Gill, Cohan, etc.).

Overall, I applaud the choices Bloomberg made. I'm looking forward to reading this new project!

...it's absurd that the entire world is hanging on the words of Ben Bernanke. He has been wrong at literally every major point in the housing bubble and then crisis. So why should we care about his predictions concerning the economy or his recommendations for how to end the slump?

The answer, of course, is that the Federal Reserve has the power to destroy the world economy. People look for meaning in each of Bernanke's semicolons because they might give a clue to the Fed's next policy move. The awesome power of the Fed has made the rest of us behave like theterrified family living with that creepy kidfrom the Twilight Zone.

I was absent from the posting cycle on the 17th and I gave a few hints in this direction. Indeed, I made it to the final cut... sort of... in the background at 2:07.

2. I had the pleasure of seeing Michael Barone speak last night at Cornell. I enjoy Barone's columns, but to watch him speak is to witness another plane of his genius. His mind is armed with an artillery of facts, figures, and historical observations that were a true delight to see him weave together.

And it wasn't just his speech that impressed me (the Democrats read into 2008 wrong, it was an anti-incumbent backlash, not a thirst for big government that elected Obama), it was the fact that he knew about the small centrally-planned facet of my hometown, Fair Lawn, NJ, which he cited when I introduced myself to him.

Did anyone like the Keynes v. Hayek video? Has anyone else seen Michael Barone speak?

In the week ending April 23, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 429,000, an increase of 25,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 404,000. The 4-week moving average was 408,500, an increase of 9,250 from the previous week's revised average of 399,250.

Economic growth slowed to a crawl in the first three months of the year as a spike in gasoline, higher overall inflation and continued weakness in the housing market all took a toll on the recovery.

Gross domestic product, the broadest measure of the nation's economic health, rose at an annual rate of 1.8%, the Commerce Department reported Thursday. That's a significant slowdown from the 3.1% growth rate in the final quarter of 2010.

Obama no longer has that "silly" distraction to wave around anymore.

So I'm predicting little if any spike for Obama from finally releasing a document all of us have had to release at some point in our lives.

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

A motion has been filed in California federal District Court seeking to vacate former Chief Judge Vaughn Walker's ruling holding that Prop. 8 violated the United States Constitution. A copy of the motion is here. As a matter of routine, the movants selected a hearing date for the motion in July before Chief Judge James Ware, who replaced Judge Walker on the case.

The motion argues that Judge Walker's recent announcement that he has been in a committed homosexual relationship for the past 8 years gave Judge Walker an interest in the outcome of the Prop. 8 ruling. The movants argue that such interest combined with evidence of actual bias, including Judge Walker's highly unusual procedural rulings in the trial whcih led among other things to a rare rebuke by the U.S. Supreme Court, demonstrated a conflict of interest which should have led Judge Walker to recuse himself from the case.

The motion is low percentage, in my estimation. Nonetheless, the motion presents important issues which need to be addressed promptly because the outcome of the motion could affect pending appellate proceedings in the California Supreme Court and 9th Circuit, so Judge Ware moved the hearing up from July to mid-June.

This is rank bigotry on the part of Judge Ware, and can only be justified by the federal court system’s consideration of gay people as second-class citizens. It is shameless prejudice. No heterosexual judge would be held to any similar standard regarding her own long-term, committed relationship. No plaintiff would dare question the bona fides of a straight judge.

Gays are second-class in federal court and in America; Judge James Ware just proved the entire point of Perry.

And no chief judge would consider such a motion about a heterosexual judge, nor would he grant a hearing and request briefs on the topic. It is absurd on its face and should be rejected by the federal court system. Judge Ware should be sanctioned for allowing such rank bigotry a place in his courtroom.

He should certainly remove himself from any further deliberations regarding the Perry case, as he’s shown himself to hold bigotry in high enough esteem to hear its arguments about a colleague.

It’s shameful and it shouldn’t be tolerated.

The comments to Partridge's post are even more hyperventilated.

Word to Teddy. Deciding motions is what Judges do. The fact that a Judge allows a hearing on a motion, and expedites consideration, does not reflect agreement with the motion.

If you really want Judge Ware off the case, gets lawyers to make the argument for you. I think I know a law firm which will do it for free, because things have been slow lately in its Gitmo detainee practice group.

I have generally believed that Obama did not release his birth certificate because he thought that the birther issue made some of his opponents look foolish. So long as the birther issue was politically beneficial, there was no reason to put it to rest.

But, true conspiracy theorists notwithstanding, now he has. Why? That is the question of the day. Does he fear Trump qua Trump? Doubtful. Trump's polling is pretty dismal at this juncture. It's Palin dismal (Don't get me wrong, I like Sarah Palin, but bad numbers are bad numbers). Did he think the public was starting to buy the birther line in a way that was particularly harmful to him? Perhaps.

If so, he may have been driven to a political blunder by a collection of basic errors in polling interpretation. As Nate Silver points out, while Gallup found that only 38% of Americans believe Obama was definitely born in the US, only 43% of Americans think Trump (about whom there is no active birther movement) was definitely born in the US.

A number of issues may be artificially inflating this high degree of uncertainty. First of all, when people are asked questions about political figures, the act of asking the question is itself a suggestion that a meaningful controversy exists about the subject. Second, people are hesitant to express absolute certainty, especially about matters they know little about or do not regularly concern themselves with. Finally, people also don't always answer the question the pollster thinks they are asking, especially when they know few actual facts about the issue in question. Polling non-obvious facts about controversial people will often result in respondents simply taking the opportunity to express positive or negative affect towards the person in question.

The number of Americans who think Obama was definitely born abroad (24%) is significantly greater than the number who think Trump was born abroad (7%), but it seems unlikely that once the sources of inflation are removed, there are all that many Americans left who are serious birthers and are the sort of people who would ever consider voting for Obama anyway.

Taken together, these theoretical flaws and Gallup's "Trump birther" pseudo-control question raise significant doubts as to the threat posed to Obama by birtherism. Had Obama waited until the election, he may have been able to strike a serious blow against his opponent and other Republicans by shooting down this conspiracy in a spectacular fashion, but instead, he did us a great favor by squandering this advantage.

Obama’s strengths and weaknesses come from his high degree of “integrative complexity” — his ability to keep multiple variables and trade-offs in mind simultaneously. The integratively simple thinker — say, George W. Bush — has one universal organizing principle that dominates all others, while the integratively complex thinker — Obama — balances many competing goals.

Oh, I get it, inconsistency and backing-out of campaign promises are symptoms of genius, not rough political polish and a lack of principle! I'm sure there's no correlation between George Bush's experience manifesting in straightforward goals and Barack Obama's "experience" waxing philosophical in a classroom for a few dozen years manifesting in insipid policies that fail upon application.

The state Supreme Court recount got off to a wobbly start here Wednesday.

After more than a half-hour of meticulous instructions and ground rules relayed by Waukesha County's chief canvasser, retired Judge Robert G. Mawdsley, questions were raised about the very first bag of ballots to be counted, from the Town of Brookfield.

As canvassers and tabulators compared a numbered seal on a bag with the number recorded for that bag by a town election inspector who prepared the paperwork on election night, the numbers didn't match.

"What a great way to start," one official tabulator said.

Observers from the campaigns of Justice David Prosser and JoAnne Kloppenburg both agreed, however, that the error seemed to be in the inspector's use of a "2" instead of a "3." Numbers on the sealing tag and on the bag did match. Both sides and the Board of Canvassers agreed that the bag should be opened and the votes counted.

I hope the Republicans in Wisconsin are not taking anything for granted. Check every car trunk before the vehicle gets within 400 feet of a recount location.

So much for our media, which has been telling us -- contrary to the actual law as I explained previously-- that Obama could not obtain original documents of his own birth records.

Succumbing to the realization -- which I also predicted -- that the "Birther" strategy was failing, the White House has purported to release this morning a "long form" birth certificate. It looks to me like a 1961 version of the short form Certificate of Live Birth. Here's the link to the White House page and the document, an image of which is below.

The story is not over, I'm sure, but this will help Obama, since the document was issued just days after his birth.

The ease with which the White House obtained the documents demonstrates the rank idiocy of the mainstream media, which has been feeding us a steady stream of excuses as to why Obama could not obtain the document.

Update: For some reason people have seized on the words "[i]t looks to me like a 1961 version of the short form" as a reflection of skepticism on my part. That was not my intent. I merely wanted to point out that the document doesn't look all that different than the document previously released, although it does have some additional information.

The document goes a long way, if not completely, towards quieting the issue. But the ease with which Obama was able to get the document leads one to wonder why he resisted so long. It was only when the Obama campaign saw the issue developing into a strategic nightmare that Obama took the simple and easy step of releasing an original document.

This also raises issues as to why the media repeatedly has told us that Obama was not able to obtain original documentation when clearly he was able to do so.

While the Obama campaign certainly will spin this as some sort of victory, it came at a high price to Obama in the polls.

Specifically, tell me about Paul Ryan as a presidential candidate, now that there are murmurings that he may jump in.

Why not? Republicans are going to have to defend the Ryan plan, who better to do it than Ryan.

Someone who conveys a seriousness about policy without being a Washington, D.C. insider, who would make mincemeat of a teleprompterless Barack Obama, someone who is willing to face down even the astroturfed crowds sent by Americans United for Change for videotaping by Think Progress.

When Jim Newell of Gawker, formerly of Wonkette, is baiting Ryan to run, maybe we're onto something. Bring on the Gawker and Wonkette crowd, and let's have at it.

"The" Turfmann took this photo of a car in the Boston area, which he says has some sort of vulgar anti-Palin wolf bumper sticker on it. And he added:

Oh, I want you to know that in keeping with your pleas to be safe, I had both hands firmly on the wheel and my seat belt on when I performed the PIT maneuver on the car, sending it careening into a Kentucky Fried Chicken parking lot. ;)

Your help in uncovering the text of these bumper stickers would be appreciated:

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